ON ENTOMOSTEACA, ETC. 19 



II. — 0» Entomostraca collected in the Solway District and at 

 Seaton Sluice, Northumberland, during the Summer of 1894. 

 By Gr. Stewaedson Eeaby, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S. 



The Solway itself and the shores immediately adjacent seem 

 to have received very little attention from naturalists. Yet the 

 district is, in other respects than its I^atural History, an ex- 

 tremely interesting one,— ^ very varied and beautiful in its 

 scenery, secluded and quiet, and out of the usual track of 

 tourists ; with many picturesque and ruinous relics of a bygone 

 age, abounding in streams and lochs fit to give employment to 

 both naturalist and angler, and associated inejBfaceably with at 

 least two of Sir Walter Scott's greatest works, '"Guy Manner- 

 ing" and " Eed gauntlet," to say nothing of the "Raiders" of 

 a more recent author, Mr. Crockett. It is, moreover, easily 

 accessible, and I suppose it is largely due to the lack of hotels 

 and other tourist accommodation that it is so little known ex- 

 cept to residents in the neighbourhood. The bit of the district 

 best known to me extends from the estuary of the ISTith— sepa- 

 rating Dumfriesshire from Kirkcudbrightshire, on the East,, to 

 the "Water of Fleet," which empties itself into Wigton Bay, 

 on the West. This coast-line is of very diversified character, 

 flat and sandy eastward, where it has behind it a large tract of 

 marsh-land, the haunt of innumerable wild fowl, but rising 

 westward into precipitous cliffs of limestone, which form in 

 some places isolated pillars of considerable height, and in others 

 are hollowed out into caverns, some of which are locally asso- 

 ciated with the name of Scott's piratical hero, Dirk Hatteraick. 

 Some of the streams — notably the "Water of Urr" — come down 

 from a background of granitic hills, bringing with them a vast 

 amount of fine detritus, which is deposited on the sides of their 

 estuaries and in the Solway itself round about their mouths. In 

 such cases the natural result is a very flat shore composed of a 

 soft muddy sand stretching out very far seaward, and at low- 

 water uncovered for stretches of many miles ; a state of things 

 not unlike that which is found in the more familiar Morecambe 



